One Day

It begins, as so many things do, in the hazy, predawn hours after a graduation party. On July 15th, 1988, in a shabby Edinburgh flat, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew lie tangled in a single bed, talking about the future. She is sharp-witted, principled, and terrified, a girl with a double-first and NHS spectacles who wants to make a difference in the world. He is handsome, privileged, and effortlessly charming, a boy who expects the world to make a difference for him. They have circled each other for four years, and now, on the cusp of everything, they have finally spent a night together. “I can imagine you at forty,” she teases, painting a picture of a shallow man in a sports car with a trophy wife. As he prepares to sneak away, she asks him to stay, and they agree to spend the day - St. Swithin's Day - together, the first of many they will share and miss.

Their twenties unfold in a series of letters and postcards, their lives diverging as if to prove their initial predictions correct. Emma trudges through the grim realities of post-graduate life, first touring schools in the West Midlands with a radical theatre troupe performing a play about slavery through “some pretty shocking mime.” Later, she finds herself in London, waitressing at a ghastly Tex-Mex restaurant, the graveyard of ambition, pouring her frustrations into poems and unfinished plays. Her letters to Dexter are long, funny, and saturated with a barely concealed longing. Dexter, meanwhile, drifts through the world's party towns - Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bombay - broadening his mind, as he puts it. His postcards are brief, buoyant, and tell her almost nothing, yet she treasures them, slips of cardboard that tether her to the life she sometimes feels she should be living.

As the years pass, Dexter stumbles into a television career, his louche charm finding a natural home in the loud, ephemeral world of youth TV. He becomes a face, a minor celebrity on a show called *larging it*, his life a blur of parties, complimentary drinks, and a revolving door of beautiful, interchangeable women. Emma, now a teacher in London, watches him from a distance, their friendship strained by his fame and frantic lifestyle. They take a holiday to Greece, a trip governed by “The Rules of Engagement” - no flirting, no nudity, separate rooms - all of which are broken or bent within days. Amid the sun and sea, the old intimacy flickers, but so does the friction. In the water one night, he offers her a fling, “just while we're away,” and she pushes his head under the water, half in anger, half in jest. Their moment, it seems, has passed.

The friendship finally fractures on a hot summer night in a cavernous Soho restaurant. Dexter, arrogant and coked-up, condescends to her about her career. “Those who can, do,” he begins, “those who can't, teach…” The cruelty of it is a physical blow, and Emma walks out. In the street outside, their years of unspoken feelings erupt in a storm of accusations and regret. He is selfish, drunk, and boring. She is judgmental and dreary. It is a fight born of love and disappointment. “Dexter, I love you so much,” she tells him, her voice breaking. “I just don't like you anymore. I'm sorry.” And with that, she walks away, leaving him alone in a back alley, the connection that has defined his adult life severed.

Years of silence follow. Dexter's career implodes. He marries Sylvie, a serene, severe beauty from a family of winners, and has a daughter, Jasmine. But the marriage is a mismatch, and his life unravels into divorce and unemployment. Emma, meanwhile, finds her voice. She quits teaching and writes a series of successful novels for young adults. One day, Dexter arrives in Paris, where she has been living. He is broken, lonely, and lost. She is poised, successful, and living a life of Parisian sophistication with a French musician. “I thought I'd finally got rid of you,” she says, her arms around him, and in that small attic flat, after more than a decade of near-misses and bad timing, they finally find their way back to each other.

They build a life together in London. It is not the grand, passionate affair she might have once imagined, but something quieter, deeper, and more real. They are a couple, navigating the gentle currents of domesticity. He runs a small, stylish café-deli; she writes her books. They argue about politics and house prices, share a bed, and try, with a quiet desperation, to have a child. The years of yearning and drama have been replaced by a steady, comforting rhythm of love and companionship. They are, for the first time, simply and profoundly happy.

On the morning of July 15th, 2004, they have a small, sharp argument about the war in Iraq. The tension of another failed month of trying for a baby hangs between them. He leaves for work, and she calls him a little later, leaving a message. “I'm sorry for being so snappy today,” she says. “The important thing is I love you very much.” She works for a few hours, then goes for her afternoon swim. Cycling home, the sky darkens and a sudden summer shower begins to fall. She pedals faster through the wet North London streets, thinking of the house they are meant to view that evening, of Dexter waiting for her. She is so preoccupied with the future that she doesn't see the vehicle turning. In an instant of screeching brakes and shattered glass, she is thrown from her bicycle. Her last thought is of him. Then Emma Mayhew dies, and everything she was, and everything they were, is gone.

The years that follow are a wilderness of grief for Dexter. He drinks, lets himself go, and becomes a ghost in his own life, haunted by her absence. He sees her everywhere - in the faces of strangers, in the margins of old photographs, on the streets of cities they visited. He is a father without a partner, a man without his anchor. “I think the best thing you could do,” his own father tells him, “is try and live your life as if Emma were still here.”

On the third anniversary of her death, he takes his daughter, Jasmine, to Edinburgh. He shows her the flat on Rankeillor Street where it all began, and then they climb Arthur's Seat, just as he and Emma did nineteen years before. He lies on the grass in the sun while his daughter plays beside him. He closes his eyes and thinks of that first day, of all the days that followed, the chain of moments, of thorns and flowers, that bound them together. He thinks of her laugh, her principles, her terrible haircuts, her kindness, her love. He misses her, of course, with an ache that will never fully subside. But as he lies there, with his daughter's hand in his, he feels not just the pain of her loss, but the enduring warmth of her life. And for the first time in a long time, he feels alright.